When comparing Google Calendar vs DigiCal Calendar & Widgets, the Slant community recommends Google Calendar for most people. In the question“What are the best Material Design calendar apps for Android?”Google Calendar is ranked 1st while DigiCal Calendar & Widgets is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Google Calendar is:

The app leverages Google Maps when adding location for an event by offering suggestions as well as offers opening Maps to help get directions to an event via shortcut on a reminder notification.

Day, 3-day and week views split up the days horizontally and hours vertically. Month view lays out all days in a grid and displays up to 3 events in a day.

Schedule view displays an agenda view that allows browsing all events by swiping vertically. Additionally, the way events are displayed in the agenda view is context-aware. For example, adding an event called "gym" will display the event on a background with a dumbbell.

All views except for month view can be split horizontally to display a condensed month view at the top that can be navigated by swiping horizontally.

Events can be added from any view by clicking the red plus button that's available at the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Pro

Integrates well with other Google services

Google Calendar is part of the Google ecosystem, it integrates with services like Google Now for creating events, Google Maps for directions and Gmail for pulling information about planned flights.

Pro

Can set on-screen and e-mail reminder notifications

Google calendar allows setting how many reminders are needed with each having the ability to set how long before the event the notification should remind and if it should be done via on-screen or e-mail notification.

Pro

Color-coding for events and calendars

The app will color-code different calendars in different colors as well as allow selecting a different color for each event.

Pro

Allows subscribing to public calendars through web client

Through the Google Calendar's web client, it is possible to subscribe to any public calendar. Google also maintains a list of public calendars for various sports events and holidays in different countries and for different religions.

Pro

Offers creating events from e-mail messages based on content

Google Calendar integrates with e-mail for quickly creating events from e-mails that contain the word "meeting" or dates or times, or any other information about events or plans that it can understand.

Pro

Straightforward event creation with autocomplete

All views have an option of adding a new event by tapping the plus sign at the lower right corner of the screen. This opens up a form and allows the user to add a location, start/end times, guests, description, color-code as well as choosing if it's an all day event, how often it repeats, how many and what kind of reminders are needed and setting the users availability and privacy settings.

Pro

Supports non-Google calendars (requires accessing web client)

Google Calendar can be integrated with any calendar that support iCalendar format, including Exchange and iCloud, via URL, but it has to be done using the web client.

Pro

Lots of third-party widgets

Google Calendar comes with a home screen widget, and there are also many third party widgets developed for this calendar app.

Pro

Awesome flairs / images view inside the agenda view / event page

Whenever you enter agenda / event title with the keywords (when available), the event will show up interesting flairs whenever the keyword inside the agenda / title you typed matches the flairs that are available inside the system, examples such as haircut, cycling, swimming, coffee, movie etc.

Pro

Advanced functionality available through IFTTT

IFTTT offers over 198 channels to plug into the users Google Calendar.

Pro

Clean interface with Material Design theme color options

The app includes a variety of theme options to choose from to customize your calendar views. These customization options also apply to details like text in the hamburger menu and calendar icons.

Pro

7 different calendar views

Pro

6 homescreen calendar widgets

DigiCal has 6 polished widgets, one for each view, available both for homescreen. Each widget has 9 themes (5 free, 4 paid) to choose from and allows some customization.

Pro

Light and dark themes

All views and widgets support light and dark themes.

Pro

Works with Google Calendar and Exchange

DigiCal allows for Google Calendar integration as well as Exchange, making for an easy to use app for businessmen as well as regular users.

Pro

Straightforward navigation

This side menu, accessed by swiping from the left-hand side, allows accessing weather, calendar views and accounts. It also allows setting a default view by starring it.

Pro

Free, ad-supported version available

There's a free ad-supported version of DigiCal as well as this paid unlock key version that costs $4.95 that removes ads as well as adds more features.

Pro

Events can be color-coded with 30 colors

DigiCal supports the 11 Google Calendar colors and 19 additional colors. Using the extra colors allows for the user to easily see different events scheduled on the calendar without having to read the titles of the events.

Pro

Illustrations or photos to match your event

Events get tagged with a photo or illustrations. The locations photos are also a really nice feature.

Pro

Events can be copied

Pro

Adjustable calendar view

It's easy to adjust the calendar view on screen, so it perfectly matches personal preferences. This refers to both size and looks and feel, because you can adjust colors, transparency, lettertype and lettertype size.

Pro

Schedule an event in a different start and end time zone

The calendar app allows you to schedule an event with a local and foreign time zone. Ideal for intercontinental flights.

Pro

Weather forecast with optional premium subscription

Once a location is provided the application will display a 3 day weather forecast in either imperial or metric units.

A premium weather subscription (USD/EUR 1.50) will expand the forecast to 15 days, add graphs and ability to set multiple weather locations.

Pro

Each widget can be connected to a separate calendar

DigiCal has the ability to create multiple widgets with each one displaying a chosen calendar. It allows for a widget on screen for work events, another widget for family activities, and a third for favorite sport team's schedules.

Pro

Good customer support

Pro

Beautiful RSVP screen for responding to calendar invitations

Lovely card based material design for the calendar info screen makes viewing information easy as well as uniform to the standards Google has set guidelines for.

Pro

Easily keep track of holidays, (live) sports, tv, finance events

Premium calendar subscriptions available for holiday, sports event, TV shows, public company events and lifestyle.

Pro

Available in 27 languages

Pro

Easy to manage your calendar invitations

Pro

Illustrations or photos to match your event

Based on the title event keywords such as locations, activities, an illustration or a photograph will show up.

Pro

Easy to add locations in calendar event

The built-in location map is very handy for looking up a location. You can zoom in and out and pinch to pinpoint a location in the interactive map.

Pro

Google Now integration

Google Now integration provides directions and traffic information.

Pro

Actionable notifications

Notifications can be snoozed and they also provide shortcuts for maps and navigation.

Pro

Provides a lot of information

DigiCal has day, week, week agenda, agenda, month, text month, list and year views. In addition to events and event information, all views include weather information, some views attach other views to it to provide context.

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Cons

Con

Privacy concerns

Google integrate all their services to connect and mine information on an individual to better profile and target advertising.

Con

No weather forecast

The Android app version of Google Calendar does not show any weather forcast information, even if it is added as an extra calendar in the web application. Being that weather is tied into Google Now, the absence is surprising.

Con

Some recurrence options not available

If you want to add a recurring event based on quirky (but normal) calendar rules, it's not supported by Google Calendar. For example, if you set up a financial calendar in Google Calendar and an event falls on a weekend or bank holiday, Google Calendar cannot schedule the occurrence properly. Worse yet, if you submit those calendar occurences via VEVENT details, Google Calendar displays different information if you use the mobile calendar vs. the desktop web calendar.

Con

No natural language input support

The Android app has no natural language input support, while it's available using the web client and in a limited capacity using Google Now.

Con

Google tasks do not show on Google Calendar

You can create tasks in your desktop Google Calendar but they will not sync nor show up in your android Google Calendar

Con

Once you create a event on a Calendar, you can't move to a different Calendar

Con

Month view shows limited information about the event

Month view does not show how many events there are in each given day or color-code them in any way, only informs of their existence.

Con

Weak default view

Even if month is set as default view, as soon as you touch a day or an event, you have to carefully select twice to get back to month view.

Con

Time zone is incorrect no matter what's done

Con

Timezone for Moscow is incorrect

Timezone for Moscow is 1 hour off. This makes the calendar unusable in Russia.

Con

Setting up non-Google calendars requires accessing web client

There is no ability in the Android app to access other calendars. This limits the usefulness for people that use more than one calendar, such as OSX and iOS users.

Con

Does not sync with Google Tasks

Does not sync with Google Tasks, a separate product is needed for this.

Con

Can quickly become crowded

The app tries condensing a lot of information at the expense of readability.

Con

No FAB button (yet)

There are plans to implement the FAB button but for now it is lacking this small detail to make it really Material.

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